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Obscure Family Feud

This has been bothering me for a long time now.
  (+10, -6)
(+10, -6)
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<Computerized Richard Dawson controlled by off-screen impressionist performance capture>

"One hundred people surveyed, top 51 answers on the board, here's the question. Name a Sri Lankan Minister of Housing."

[X]

waugsqueke, Nov 19 2004

Sri Lankan Chiefs of State & Cabinet Menbers http://www.exxun.com/SriLanka/j_cf.html
[jurist, Nov 19 2004]

[link]






       Hosted by Dennis Miller?   

       A survey of 100 Beltway insiders said:
theircompetitor, Nov 19 2004
  

       Um, Ferial Ashraff.   

       Do Obscure Feuding Families (OFF) get to use their choice of meta-search engines as an adopted or substitute family member? Auntie Google? Uncle DogPile? Cousin AltaVista? It wouldn't actually matter that they had access to the correct answer if they were trying to match their answer to the ones most commonly uttered by the studio audience.
jurist, Nov 19 2004
  

       // Do feuding Families get to use their choice of meta-search engines as an adopted or substitute family member? //
I would hope not. The current trend for humiliating members of the public on the gogglebox could be applied here quite nicely. Get the University Challenge question setters onto it.
calum, Nov 19 2004
  

       [calum] Perhaps you've not had an opportunity to see the US version "Family Feud" show.(Some people would count you fortunate.) It doesn't matter what the "correct" answer to the posed question might be. What does matter is how the surveyed audience answered the question. The trick is to match the most frequently cited answers that the audience provided.   

       Since audiences are not quite as dumb as pollsters might have you believe though, you would think that knowing the variety of true answers would actually be a boon. Still, I wouldn't want to place money on a bet that many US audiences recognize any of the names of the employees of the Sri Lankan Ministry of Housing, including the current Minister and any of his predecessors.
jurist, Nov 19 2004
  

       I have had the opportunity to see "Family Fortunes" (the UK equivalent) and it was as edifying an experience as I have ever had. In the UK version, the audience's input is rejected in favour of asking "members of the public" presumably on the basis that if you are willing to travel to see FF being made, you are already unlikely to be able to list "a yellow fruit" or a "thing you do in the bath" without having a week or so to think about it.   

       Regardless, the humiliation would be just as effective even assuming a family picked the highest rated "wrong" answer, provided they were eventually informed of the correct answer. Of course, waugs could be offering the show as a highbrow alternative, presented before a panel of tweedsporting academic misfits, with no humiliation for the contestant, unless they are unable to name the least populous electoral ward in Norway.   

       Either formulation sounds more entertaining than the current one.
calum, Nov 19 2004
  

       "We asked 100 random strangers, "What is the average air speed of a fully laden swallow?"..."

I would be in favour if the penalty for incorrect answers was that the contestant was swept away and plunged, in pythonesque fashion, unceremoniously into a fiery abyss. Alas waugs, I doubt that this would be allowed and I am therefore compelled to belabour you about the head and body with this smelly fish carcass.
DrBob, Nov 19 2004
  

       I imagined this as a Mark Twainesque story about two warring families in the deep south who perhaps fell out over the different shades of Beets they were farming.
"Dang those Arbuckle's with their rosy beets."
"But Paw, owah beets is rosy too?"
"No boy, owah beets is mauve! An doan-chu forgedit or ah will take off mah belt Ah swear ah will- Dear Lord if your Aunt Betsy could hear you now, she'd turn. So she would."
zen_tom, Nov 19 2004
  

       Richard Karn's not obscure enough?   

       Don't go dissin' the // tweedsporting academic misfits //, calum, for I work with these people day in and day out. They're not *all* bad. And they don't *all* twitch, either.
salachair, Nov 19 2004
  

       "Name the number 1 answer, families we polled, gave for the name of a Sri Lankan Minister of Housing."   

       (chime)   

       "I don't know."   

       "Survey says?"   

       (Bing)   

       "You are correct! 'I don't know' was our number one answer!" +
sartep, Nov 19 2004
  

       Kinda reminds me of 'Street Smarts' where the host goes out and finds postively the dumbest people breathing and asks obvious questions like: 'Who is the current Prime Minister of England' and the contestants have to guess who gets it wrong. Sortof 'Jay Walking' meets quiz show.
RayfordSteele, Nov 20 2004
  

       MSGS3K +
ato_de, Nov 21 2004
  
      
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